ame for everything. I told you
once--long ago--that I understood. And I understand now, old girl,
understand as I never did before. I fancy we both have been living
according to a wrong notion of things. We started right when we were
first married, but I worked away from it somehow and pulled you along
with me. But we've both been through a great big change, honey, a great
big change, and we're starting all over again.... Well, there's the
carriage, I guess."

They rose, gathering up their valises.

"Hoh!" said Jadwin. "No servants now, Laura, to carry our things down
for us and open the door, and it's a hack, old girl, instead of the
victoria or coupe."

"What if it is?" she cried. "What do 'things,' servants, money, and all
amount to now?"

As Jadwin laid his hand upon the knob of the front door, he all at once
put down his valise and put his arm about his wife. She caught him
about the neck and looked deep into his eyes a long moment. And then,
without speaking, they kissed each other.

In the outer vestibule, he raised the umbrella and held it over her
head.

"Hold it a minute, will you, Laura?" he said.

He gave it into her hand and swung the door of the house shut behind
him. The noise woke a hollow echo throughout all the series of empty,
denuded rooms. Jadwin slipped the key in his pocket.

"Come," he said.

They stepped out from the vestibule. It was already dark. The rain was
falling in gentle slants through the odorous, cool air. Across the
street in the park the first leaves were beginning to fall; the lake
lapped and washed quietly against the stone embankments and a belated
bicyclist stole past across the asphalt, with the silent flitting of a
bat, his lamp throwing a fan of orange-coloured haze into the mist of
rain.

In the street in front of the house the driver, descending from the
box, held open the door of the hack. Jadwin handed Laura in, gave an
address to the driver, and got in himself, slamming the door after.
They heard the driver mount to his seat and speak to his horses.

"Well," said Jadwin, rubbing the fog from the window pane of the door,
"look your last at the old place, Laura. You'll never see it again."

But she would not look.

"No, no," she said. "I'll look at you, dearest, at you, and our future,
which is to be happier than any years we have ever known."

Jadwin did not answer other than by taking her hand in his, and in
silence they drove through the city towards t